"The free movement of
persons and the abolition of controls at the internal borders
of the EU are among the greatest achievements of European integration
but are, at the same time, a major challenge to efforts to safeguard
security and public order.

The proposed action should
not just be confined to certain types of judgment (e.g. the abovementioned
bans on travel to certain States). It should also cover (at least
at the risk assessment stage) the broadest possible range of
criminal offenders."

"1. Up to now, the European
Union has taken a bilateral approach concerning the transfer
of Passenger Name Record (PNR) data from EU airline companies
to third countries; the three current PNR-agreements with the
USA, Canada and Australia oblige airline companies to transfer
PNR data to authorities relating to all passengers flying to,
from or through those countries. All existing PNR transfers to
third countries are hence governed by a bilateral agreements
and have been negotiated on a case-by-case basis.

2. More and more third countries, among others Japan, Saudi Arabia,
Qatar, the Republic of Korea and New Zealand are (considering)
using PNR data for law enforcenment purposes, and have requested
or are expected to request entering into bilateral agreements
with the Union.".

"might wander unwittingly
into areas of sensitivity from a security point of view"

In 1976 when I was
completing the "History and practice of the Political
Police in Britain" (published first in hardback in 1976
by Julian Friedmann Publishers) the D-Notice Committee under
Rear
Admiral Kenneth Haydn Farnhill CB OBE was a shadowy body
- the press could not even print stories published overseas without
his say-so. At the time the 1971 D-Notice no 10: British
Intelligence Services (pdf) was in force and the book
dealt substantively with these "no-go" areas. The Journalist
magazine (NUJ) reported in June 1976 what happened:

"The Sunday Herald can
reveal that forces Counter Corruption Unit (CCU) 
dubbed a secret police force by critics  is
being probed by a surveillance watchdog over a violation criticised
by the Prime Minister.

The revelations prompted the
Interception of Communications Commissioner Office (IOCCO),
which monitors the use of the RIPA, to investigate the extent
of the snooping on reporters across the UK. IOCCO became aware
of 34 police investigations over a three-year period, covering
the relationship between 105 journalists and 242 sources. A majority
of the applications, the Commissioner concluded, failed to justify
the principles of necessity and proportionality.
In March, the RIPA was amended to require that a revised Code
of Practice protected the public interest in the confidentiality
of sources,"

" Public discussion of
the United Kingdom's defence and counter-terrorist policy and
overall strategy does not impose a threat to national security
and is welcomed by Government. It is important however that such
discussion should not disclose details which could damage national
security. The DSMA-Notice System is a means of providing advice
and guidance to the media about defence and counter-terrorist
information the publication of which would be damaging to national
security. The system is voluntary, it has no legal authority
and the final responsibility for deciding whether or not to publish
rests solely with the editor or publisher concerned."

The Federal Prosecutor General is
investigating two German journalists suspected of treason for
releasing information classified as "confidential"
online. Charges have been filed against Markus Beckedahl and
Andre Meister, the two reporters who run the blog
netzpolitik.org.

"That the Federal Prosecutor General who failed
to investigate charges against the NSA is now investigating journalists
and their whistleblowers is a deeply disturbing assault against
journalism critical of the intelligence agencies' activities
and an assault against the freedom of press."

"This document is the
European Union's proposal for services, investment and e-commerce
text. It was tabled for discussion with the US in the negotiating
round of 12 -17 July 2015 and made public on 31 July 2015. The
actual text in the final agreement will be a result of negotiations
between the EU and US."

"No federal privacy
law expressly regulates commercial uses of facial recognition
technology, and laws do not fully address key privacy issues
stakeholders have raised, such as the circumstances under which
the technology may be used to identify individuals or track
their whereabouts and companions. Laws governing the collection,
use, and storage of personal information may potentially apply
to the commercial use of facial recognition in specific contexts
, such as information collected by health care entities and financial
institutions." [emphasis
added]

"No overarching federal
privacy law governs the collection and sale of personal information
among private-sector companies, including information
resellers. Instead, a variety of laws tailored to specific
purposes, situations, or entities governs the use, sharing, and
protection of personal information." [emphasis added]

Burgenlands
red-blue coalition of shame (IRR, link): "The Labour Party is debating
how to win back votes from UKIP. Meanwhile, in Austria, the Burgenland
Social Democrats have set a worrying precedent, entering into
a coalition with the extreme Right in the provincial legislative
assembly." and Deaths
in custody news round-up (IRR, link): "The last
month has seen a number of developments in relation to deaths
in custody: a misconduct hearing, the ten-year anniversary of
the death of Jean Charles de Menezes, an inquest, new deaths
in custody and a new government review of deaths
in police custody. Jean Charles de Menezes remembered."

EU-MED-CRISIS:

Asylum seeker death toll rising (IRR, link): "In the last two
months, at least thirteen people, two of whom were teenagers,
have died trying to reach the UK, and countless others have been
injured."

Inquiring into police accountability
and spying on family campaigns (IRR, link): "On 16 July, the Home Office
announced an inquiry into undercover police spies and their activities
monitoring family campaigns and spying on protestors.Below we
produce a statement by The Monitoring Group[1] which has been
supporting some of the families whose campaigns were infiltrated
by the police."

The USA role in justice
and home affairs is like that of the 29th EU state. Year after
year since 2001 there have been regular meetings of Ministers
and Senior Officials in Brussels and Washington - it also attended
the six-monthly G6 meetings of EU Interior Ministers (and its
preparatory meetings).

The USA is a major, unseen,
influence on EU justice and home affairs policies and practices
and uses the meetings to lobby for direct access to EU and Member
State databases.

These meetings take place on the oft-repeated assumption that
the USA and the EU share common values of democracy, the
rule of law and respect for human rights and fundamental values.
However, there are many people, in Europe and the USA, who do
indeed believe we share these common values, but
not the policies and practices of our governments.

"Quiet preparations for
the EUs ambitious smart borders proposals are
ongoing. This will require the fingerprinting of all non-EU residents
entering the Schengen area, and is made up proposals for an Entry/Exit
System intended to detect visa overstayers; a Registered
Traveller Programme for the vetting of selected individuals before
they arrive at EU borders; and proposals for relevant legal amendments
to the Schengen Borders Code....

The multiple efforts to ensure
ever-greater capture, storage and sharing of information suggest
that people on the move are increasingly seen as a threat that
needs to be regulated and managed through high-tech surveillance
combined with on-the-ground information-gathering
and police operations. All of these initiatives pose significant
challenges to fundamental rights, in different ways. The fact
that they are, for the most part, discussed and prepared in secret
only adds to the concerns that they raise."

The EU wants to replace ink-on-paper
passport stamps with a digital alternative as part of its plans
for an Entry/Exit System supposed to detect visa "overstayers".
Member States are not convinced by the idea.

A proposed new database known as the Entry/Exit System (EES)
would require the fingerprinting of all non-residents entering
the Schengen area, with the aim of making it easier to calculate
and detect who has "overstayed" their visa entitlement.
A Registered Traveller Programme (RTP), for the vetting of certain
travellers before they reach EU borders, would also be introduced,
along with amendments to the Schengen Borders Code.

However, the Commission's plan has raised concerns amongst the
Member States. Documents obtained by Statewatch show that
a majority of Member States consider passport stamps to be the
most effective way of detecting overstayers

"It's late afternoon
on the forested slopes of Mount Selouane. In single file or knots
of friends, young West African men are trudging down the hillside
to the dusty, dishevelled outskirts of the Moroccan village of
Shadia.

Nearly everyone is carrying
an empty water bottle, part of their daily routine to fill them
for free from standpipes outside the few general stores. They
come as well to get a better network connection, to check their
Facebook, make calls home, or catch up on friends who have made
it to Europe."

"Upon request by the
JURI Committee this in-depth analysis explains what general principles
of EU administrative procedural law are, and how they can be
formulated in the recitals of a Regulation on EU administrative
procedure."

On 5 May 2015, the third section
of the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) in Strasbourg unanimously
found Spain guilty of violating the procedural aspects of article
3 of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR). Arratibel
Garciandia applied to the ECtHR on 6 September 2013, complaining
about the failure by Spains internal jurisdiction to effectively
investigate allegations that he was subjected to ill-treatment
following his arrest at 3 a.m. on 18 January 2011 in his home
in Etxarri Aranatz (Navarre). He was placed in incommunicado
detention until 22 January and transferred to the Guardia Civils
general directorate in Madrid, after his fingerprints and a DNA
sample were taken in the Pamplona audiencia provincial (province
court) in the Navarre region.

CES 2000 MIGRANTS FANTÔMES OFFERTS
AU BRITISH TAXPAYER
(passeursdhospitalites, link): ["What is the relationship
between the "British taxpayer" and the announcement
of spectacular figures for the increase in the number of pass
attempts by the Channel Tunnel, 2000 in the night of Monday to
Tuesday (2200 according to the BBC), nothing corroborates in
the field?"]

EU: MED-CRISIS:: WHERE IS
THE EU GOING?: Channel
Tunnel: '2,000 migrants' tried to enter (BBC News, link):
"Some 2,000 migrants tried to enter the Channel Tunnel
terminal in Calais on Monday night in an attempt to reach the
UK, operator Eurotunnel has said."

EU: DATA PROTECTION REGULATION:
Council of the European Union: Latest state of play in secret
trilogue meetings at summer break: Chapter
II, preparation of trilogue (LIMITE doc no 10790-15,
pdf): Developing the Council's position: "With a view
to preparing the next trilogue, the Presidency invites delegations
to discuss Chapter II . Principles (Articles 5-10).... While
underlining that the General Approach reached by Council on 15th
June 2015 constitutes the basis of the Presidencys
negotiation mandate, and taking into account the position of
the European Parliament on Chapter II, the Presidency invites
delegations to share their views on the different questions and
suggestions listed below (points 7 and 8)." [emphasis
added]

and Presidency
debriefing on the outcome of the trilogue on 14 July 2015
(LIMITE doc no: 10680-15, pdf): 93 pages with multi-column positions.
Summary of discussions including: "discussed in a trilogue
on the General Data Protection Regulation the provisions related
to Chapter V on transfer of personal data to third countries
or international organisations and on the territorial scope
of the Regulation." (emphasis added)

"Today, as the European
Data Protection Supervisor sent his recommendations to the EU
co-legislators negotiating the final text of the General Data
Protection Regulation (GDPR), he launched
a mobile app to compare the latest texts from the Commission,
the Parliament and the Council more easily on tablets and smartphones.

Giovanni Buttarelli, EDPS,
said: Privacy and data protection matter more than ever
to people. For the first time in a generation the EU has an opportunity
to modernise, harmonise and simplify the rules on how personal
information is handled. These rules must be relevant for the
next generation of technologies. As part of my remit to be proactive
and constructive, my recommendations aim to support the co-legislators
to get a better deal for the individual, to make safeguards more
effective in practice and enable them to benefit from technological
innovation."

"The SDS was run by the
Met and collected what the review called high-grade intelligence
on protesters during deep infiltration operations.
Established in 1968, the unit planted more than 100 undercover
officers in more than 460 political groups, until it was wound
up in 2008. The undercover officers adopted intricate fake personas
and pretended to be campaigners for spells of usually five years.

The SDS spies were deployed
to gather information about protests organised by campaigns including
those of grieving families seeking the truth about police misconduct,
environmentalists and anti-racist groups."

Follow
the Spycops Across Borders
(COPs, link): "German MP Andrej Hunko, who has taken
great interest in Mark Kennedys deployment in Germany,
has written to the Home Secretary insisting that the
forthcoming inquiry into undercover police includes UK
officers actions abroad. It comes after Mays announcement
last week which, whilst scant on detail, did specify that it
will cover operations conducted by English and Welsh police
forces in England and Wales. Its known that officers
from the political police units have been going abroad for about
twenty years. Conversely, their foreign counterparts work over
here." See also: Secrets
and lies: undercover police operations raise more questions than
answers (Statewatch database, link)

UK: Judge
overrules Theresa May and allows convicted terror prisoner to
be freed (Independent, link): "A man believed
by police to pose a threat to the UK is to be released from prison
after Theresa May lost a court case to keep him in jail until
he can be deported. The man, a foreign national, has spent years
in behind bars on terror-related offences and is still believed
to pose a threat to the public."

N IRELAND: The
torture centre and the hooded men (Irish
Times, link): "Weekend read: In 1971 the British army
took 14 men to a secret location in rural Co Derry and subjected
them to a horrific interrogation from which they have never recovered.
Nine of the surviving hooded men are still seeking
justice for what they say was torture  and they have the
human-rights lawyer Amal Clooney on their side."

UK-USA-GCHQ-NSA: Speech by Tony Bunyan
Statewatch Director, Cardiff University, 18 June 2015: Surveillance
and democracy: the EU and civil liberties (YouTube, link).
Tony talks about surveillance with respect to the European Union
and the effect the EU has on our civil liberties. He details
that what has happen in terms of mass surveillance is nothing
new, but what is new is the political and legal framework which
allows it to happen. And gives an overview of the relationships
between each of the following: 1) Gatherers of data (NSA, GCHQ),
2) Users of data (CIA, FBI), 3) Suppliers of data (Corporations)
and 4) Targets of surveillance (Suspected terrorists, protests
and dissenters, refugees and asylum seekers, migrant communities,
general public)

This talk was given as part of
the plenary session entitled State-Media-Citizen Relations in
the Surveillance Society. It was part of the 2015 Surveillance
and Citizenship Conference held at Cardiff Universitys
School of Journalism, Media and Cultural Studies ITALY: Strage
di piazza della Loggia, ergastolo per Maggi e Tramonte 41 anni
dopo[Life sentences for Maggi and Tramonte, 41 years
after the piazza della Loggia massacre]: 41 years after an
attack using explosives against a trade union antifascist demonstration
in Brescia in which eight people were killed and more than 100
people were injured on 28 May 1974, Carlo Maria Maggi of the
far-right Ordine Nuovo group, and Maurizio Tramonte, a former
intelligence service source, were convicted and received life
sentences.

UK: What is "The
Wilson Doctrine" (House of Commons, pdf) that says
MPs must not be put under surveillance by the state?

Londons Metropolitan
Police Service has admitted it is still carrying out the probe,
which is being led by its counterterrorism department, after
previously refusing to confirm or deny its existence on the grounds
that doing so could be detrimental to national security.
The disclosure was made by police in a
letter sent to this reporter Tuesday,

The admission that the investigation
remains ongoing triggered criticism from the U.K.s largest
journalists organization. Michelle Stanistreet, general
secretary of the National Union of Journalists, called on the
police to stop attacking press freedom. Journalists
who reported on the Snowden documents are not criminals, they
are not a threat to national security, Stanistreet said"

EU-MED-CRISIS:

GREECE: PRESS
RELEASE: Alarming humanitarian crisis at Pedion tou Areos
park: The Greek Forum of Refugees, following the Press
Release from Afghan Community in Greece, seeks to raise awareness
concerning the situation of hundreds of Afghan asylum seekers.
Fleeing the war in Afghanistan and seeking for protection and
safety in Europe, they arrived in Lesvos Island and ended up
in Athens.

- The
Latest: NYC mayor denounces EU over immigration (Yahoo
News, link): "New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio has
denounced the European Union for leaving Italy to deal with waves
of immigrants coming from North Africa, saying the EU must come
up with a Europe-wide immigration policy."

Il dono del governo Monti fa strage
in Libia [The Monti
government's gift kills in Libya]: The "Puma" armoured
cars Italy gave Libya as a gift to help restore its state apparatus
two years ago, have been converted into rocket launchers by the
Tripoli militias.

French court backs mass surveillance (euobserver, link): "The constitutional
court in France on Thursday (23 July) broadly approved a new
law that gives the state wide-sweeping surveillance powers....
They will be able to use a so-called IMSI Catcher,
which picks up and records all text messages, phone calls, and
Internet communication in a given area. This includes people
not suspected of any crime. Wireless phone taps, hidden cameras
and microphones, and forcing Internet providers to monitor suspicious
behaviour using special "black boxes" are also in store.
A warrant or any other type of court approval is not needed."

"Without specific time
frames, it will be difficult for the bureau to ensure timely
implementation of programmatic improvements. In addition, despite
identifying its CVE program as a priority and acknowledging the
benefit of evaluating it, the bureau has postponed evaluating
it each fiscal year since 2012."

"The Berlin-based European
Center for Constitutional and Human Rights (ECCHR) and the Center
for Constitutional Rights (CCR) in New York, together with their
cooperating lawyer in Madrid, Gonzalo Boye, have lodged an appeal
against the Spanish National Courts decision to halt the
long-running investigation into torture at the U.S. detention
center in Guantánamo."

"Responding to the announcement,
Deborah Coles, Co-Director of INQUEST, said: For the review
to be effective bereaved families, their lawyers and INQUEST
will need to play an integral role in the review, and the Reviewer
will need to take full account of their views and experiences.
It must also address why so many previous recommendations from
reviews, inquiries and inquests have not been acted upon. It
is too early to tell if this is more about a public relations
exercise than a real attempt to bring about effective systemic
change and the necessary accountability of police officers."

Preserving Britains Black heroes (IRR News Service, link) "Below
we reproduce a review of a new exhibition, No Colour Bar,
which was previously published in The Voice. A new exhibition
breathes life into a story of struggle and activism that is truly
home-grown."

The government wants to restrict
Freedom of Information laws - that help citizens expose dodgy
lobbyists, poor government decisions and threats to public safety.
They're desperate to water-down our right to hold them to account.
While only a few of us may have ever made a request using Freedom
of Information laws - they have the power to affect us all."

Canada's anti-terrorism Bill C-51 faces
charter challenge from civil society (IFEX, link): "The Canadian Civil Liberties
Association (CCLA) and Canadian Journalists for Free Expression
(CJFE) are initiating a Charter challenge today against key sections
of Bill C-51, the Anti-terrorism Act, 2015. The legislation presents
disturbing implications for free speech, privacy, the powers
of government, including CSIS, and the protection of civil liberties
in Canada."

SPIEGELInterview
with Julian Assange: 'We Are Drowning in Material' (Der
Spiegel, link): "In an interview, Julian Assange, 44,
talks about the comeback of the WikiLeaks whistleblowing platform
and his desire to provide assistance to a German parliamentary
committee that is investigating mass NSA spying."

"the IPCC found support
for the allegation that three senior police officers in
command at Orgreave had made up an untrue account exaggerating
the degree of violence (in particular missile throwing)
from miners to justify their use of force and the charges of
riot. The report said one of these most senior officers had his
statement typed and witnessed by another officer who led a team
of detectives which, the IPCC said, dictated those identical
opening paragraphs of junior officers statements" (Guardian report)

ECHR rules Cyprus must pay Syrian deportees (Cyprus Mail, link): "The European
Court of Human Rights (ECHR) on Tuesday ordered Cyprus to pay
three Syrian Kurds deported from the island almost 17,000
in total for violating their human rights. Filed in 2010, the
cases concerned a total of 17 Syrian Kurds who applied for asylum
on the island saying they were at risk of persecution and torture
in their home country as they are a small minority. Cyprus deported
them all in 2012."

UK: Met
press office provided journalists' mobile numbers so police could
view call records and find sources (Press Gazette, link):
"The Metropolitan Police made a series of errors in secret
applications to view the phone records of Sun journalists and
showed a complete failure to consider issues around the confidentiality
of sources, a court heard. The Investigatory Powers Tribunal
yesterday also heard that the Met Police press office provided
the mobile telephone numbers of Sun journalists who had called
in to check stories and ask for comments to investigating officers.
Their phone records and telephone location data were then secretly
accessed by police in order to identify confidential sources."

EU: MED-CRISIS: COMPULSORY FINGER PRINTING
OF MIGRANTS including: "fingerprinting [with] the use of
a proportionate degree of coercion" including on
"vulnerable persons, such as minors or pregnant women"
AGREED WITHOUT DISCUSSION at: Justice and Home Affairs Council,
20 July 2015, Brussels:

"On 16 June 2015, the
Commission held an ad-hoc technical meeting with Member States
and Associated Countries. The main focus of the meeting was to
gain a deeper understanding of the challenges Member States face
when taking fingerprints and to agree on a common best practice
approach to taking fingerprints in circumstances where the migrant
refuses to cooperate. At that meeting, participating Member
States reiterated their different practices when fingerprinting
asylum seekers and irregular migrants and talked about different
ways to deal with non-cooperation and damaged fingertips. The
meeting concluded with the unanimous agreement of all Member
States present that the best practices put forward in the
above Commission document should be followed...

All delegations welcomed the
[Commission] document, which, based on existing EU law, provides
useful guidance to facilitate the systematic taking of fingerprints
in full respect of fundamental rights and more specifically
of the right to data protection... Coreper is therefore requested
to recommend that the Council, at its meeting on 20 July 2015,
invite the Member States to follow the mentioned 10-step approach." [emphasis added]

There is no reference to the
"fingerprinting [with] the use of a proportionate degree
of coercion" on "vulnerable persons, such as minors
or pregnant women" in the Commission proposal (below)

EU states fall short on asylum targets (euobserver, link): "Interior
ministers in Brussels on Monday (20 July) fell short of a European
Commission-proposed target to relocate 40,000 asylum seekers
arriving in Greece and Italy over the next two years. Instead
they agreed to relocate 32,356 with Austria and Hungary refusing
to take any asylum-seekers, despite the plan being billed by
EU leaders last month as a demonstration of European solidarity."

Resettling 20 000 displaced persons
from outside the EU in clear need of international protection
Relocating from Greece and Italy 40 000 persons in clear need
of international protection
Provisional measures in the area of international protection
for the benefit of Italy and Greece
Designation of certain third countries as safe countries of origin

EU finally begins making headway on march
toward harmonised and regulated European RPAS air insertion gameplan (Security Europe, link): "The
EUs goal of framing a regulatory structure to enable remotely
piloted aircraft systems (RPAS), or drones, to safely move through
Europes airspace is moving ahead, if slowly. A first decisive
step was the European Commissions March 205 Riga
declaration where stakeholders committed themselves to
a drone service market. However, for that ambition, we
are still very much at a vision stage, said Koen de Vos,
RPAS policy officer at the Commissions Directorate-General
for Mobility & Transport."

'Migration is not a security issue,'
study says (euractiv,
link): "The Federal Republic should apply new thinking
to its development aid and asylum policy, says a new study from
the University of Osnabrück, calling on decision-makers
to see migration as an opportunity rather than a threat."

EU: "FREE MOVEMENT OF [LEA] DATA":
Council of the European Union developing its negotiating position
on the: Proposed Directive on the exchange of personal data between
law enforcement agencies (LEAs) in the EU:

"DE, supported by FI,
wanted it to be possible to transfer data to private bodies/entities,
for cybercrime this was important. NL, SE and SI agreed with
DE on the need for a solution on transfer to private parties
in third countries...."

See Statewatch Observatory: Observatory on data
protection and law enforcement agencies - the protection
of personal data in police and judicial matters (2005-2008) and
new proposals 2011 ongoing with full-text documentation on all
the secret discussions in the Council - Last updated 19 July
2015

This programme shows how far
the gains of the landmark 1999 Macpherson report have been rolled
back. The media now considers racism something to be consigned
to Britains past; it has been dealt with.[7]
As community anger continues  in case after case 
the media, faced with interpreting this dissent, proves incapable
of scrutinising the actions that cause it. Left with effect without
cause, it has turned to the same institutions that generate anger
to fill the gap in the narrative."

The fifth report on French detention
centres, published jointly by the associations ASSFAM, Forum
Réfugiés - Cosi, France terre d'asile, La Cimade
and Ordre de Malta France, provides a wealth of official
data, statistics and critical analysis concerning detention centres
and places of detention for migrants on the French mainland and
overseas territories for 2014.... [and] a practice initially
introduced to target third-country nationals was later extended
to Romanians and Bulgarians, and is now being used to deal with
citizens of several EU member states..

UK: House of Lords Select Committee
on the European Union: The
United Kingdom opt-in to the proposed Council Decision on the
relocation of migrants within the EU (pdf): "We
understand that the Government is minded not to opt into the
proposed Council Decision establishing provisional measures in
the area of international protection for the benefit of Italy
and Greece. Nevertheless, we believe that it is in the United
Kingdoms interest to take part in the negotiation of this
proposal, and that, should an amended or a new proposal be brought
forward giving effect to the European Councils Conclusions
in April and June 2015, the Government should reconsider its
position and opt in."

"The CJEU ruled back
in 2006 that the Council could not give itself special power
to adopt a common list of supposed safe countries of origin,
but had to follow the full EU legislative process. When EU law
on asylum procedure was revised in 2013, the power to adopt such
a common list was deliberately left out. But the Council now
plans to draw up a de facto common list, with no democratic accountability
whatsoever, in clear contempt for the rule of law."
- Explanatory
note on the Hotspot approach (pdf): "structured
border zones" are now referred to as "first
reception facilities".or "pre-removal centres"

"The aim of the "Hotspot"
approach is to provide comprehensive and targeted support by
the EU Agencies to frontline Member States which are faced
with disproportionate migratory pressures at the external
borders.... Frontex will provide prompt support for the identification
of irregular migrants, the acquisition of travel document for
their return, as well as carrying out return operations to
bring them back to their home countries... . establishment of
a common EU list of "safe countries of origin" [emphasis added]

See below documents on the Council's
positions

EU: MED-CRISIS: Council of
the European Union: Justice and Home Affairs Council, 20 July
2015: Background
Note (pdf) This will be a Mixed Committee (with Iceland,
Liechtenstein, Norway and Switzerland attending) meeting discussing:

"Home affairs ministers
will discuss the implementation package of the European Agenda
on Migration as regards the resettlement and relocation of 60
000 persons in clear need of protection in the member states.
Ministers are also expected to adopt conclusions on the designation
of certain third countries as safe countries of origin within
the meaning of the Asylum Procedures directive."

"The German Institute
for Human Rights has criticised the repurposing of the EU's fingerprint
database, Eurodac, for registering asylum seekers. Tagesspiegel
reports. Biometric information, to which the police will soon
be given access, will be stored there for ten years, just because
an individual has fled their country, activists have warned.

The German Institute for Human
Rights (DIMR) has come out strongly against the biometric registration
of asylum seekers at Europe's external borders. The new regulation
on Eurodac, scheduled to take effect on 20 July, is a misuse
of the EU database and allows for "considerable interference
into fundamental rights", said Eric Töpfer, a research
associate at the institute."

"The high court has found
that emergency surveillance legislation introduced by the coalition
government last year is unlawful. A judicial challenge by the
Labour MP Tom Watson and the Conservative MP David Davis has
overturned the Data Retention and Investigatory Powers Act (Dripa)
2014. The judges ruled that data retention powers in the legislation
were inconsistent with EU laws. The government has been ordered
to pass new legislation that must come into effect by the end
of next March..... they argued, were there adequate safeguards
against communications data leaving the European Union."
and: Davis
and Watson DRIPA challenge: Government surveillance law is unlawful,
High Court rules (Liberty, link)

EU-MED CRISIS: European Parliament:
MEPs
want a binding and permanent scheme to distribute asylum seekers
in the EU (Press release, pdf): "A binding emergency
mechanism to relocate an initial total of 40,000 asylum seekers
from Italy and Greece to other EU member states was backed by
civil liberties MEPs on Thursday. An upcoming permanent scheme,
on which Parliament will decide jointly with the Council, must
be based "on a more substantial contribution to solidarity
and responsibility-sharing among member states", MEPs say."

Meijers Committee: Summary
Annual Report 2014 (link): "This summary of the
annual report 2014 provides a brief overview of the activities
of the Meijers Committee last year. A full report is available
in Dutch here. With scholarly assessments of pending European
legislative proposals regarding migration, security and justice
cooperation, the Committee tried to clarify the overarching legal
framework and to contribute to constitutional quality of new
legislation. "

MEPs denounce EU funding of Israeli defence
firms (euractiv,
link): "MEPs have called for tighter controls on European
financing of Israeli companies. Lax regulation currently allows
weapons manufacturers access to EU funding. EurActiv France reports.
The participation of certain Israeli companies in the EU's vast
research and development programme Horizon 2020 has angered some
European lawmakers."

The European Parliament's civil
liberties committee has approved a proposed text for the EU PNR
(Passenger Name Record) Directive, by 32 votes to 27. The legislation
will be finalised later in the year through secret trilogue discussions
between the Parliament, the Council and the Commission. Jan Phillip
Albrecht, a Green MEP, has long been a critic of the proposed
scheme. Remarking upon the deal, he said: "If these proposal
do not infringe constitutional or treaty provisions, then civil
rights in the EU is meaningless."

MED CRISIS: House
of Commons Library: Briefing paper: Mediterranean boat people
(pdf): "Huge numbers of people are dying trying to cross
the Mediterranean to Southern Europe from Libya. Lawlessness
in Libya means that there is little authority to control the
flow; some of the militias controlling the country are profiting
from the trade. The numbers safely reaching their destination
are creating problems for the recipient countries... The EU has
also launched a military operation called EUNAVFOR MED, to disrupt
the smuggling business that would include destroying boats used
by the smugglers. The UK has contributed HMS Enterprise to the
operation. There are, however, significant legal and practical
problems with this approach."

Cybercriminal
Darkode forum taken down through global action(Europol
press release, pdf): "This week, law enforcement and
judicial authorities worldwide have taken down the most prolific
English-speaking cybercriminal forum to date: Darkode. In an
international coordinated action against the hacking forum and
its users, investigators from all over the world targeted cybercriminals
that were using the Darkode forum to trade and barter their hacking
expertise, malware and botnets, and to find partners for their
next spam runs or malware attacks."

"Eurojusts Annual
Report 2014 reveals that the number of serious organised crime
cases registered with Eurojust has grown steadily every year
since 2002, when Eurojust had 202 cases. In 2014, the number
of cases increased to 1 804, an increase over 2013 of 14.5 %,
and demonstrates the increased demand by the Member States for
Eurojusts cross-border judicial support."

The European Parliament's civil
liberties committee will today (15 July) vote on whether or not
to approve the proposed PNR (Passenger Name Record) Directive.
This will establish an EU-wide legal basis for handing air passengers'
data to national law enforcement units, which will process and
analyse the data in the name of combating terrorism and crime.
The European Parliament's political groups are divided on the
proposal.

"Netzpolitik.org is arguably
the most influential German blog in the realm of digital rights.
It played a key role in marshalling protests against ACTA three
years ago. You'd think the German government would be proud of
it as an example of local digital innovation, but instead, it
seems to regard it as some kind of traitor: "

Does the UK government take public
debate on domestic drones seriously? It hasn't yet set a date
for a parliamentary debate on domestic drones, says its planned
"public dialogue" will likely be "a series of
drop-in events around the UK later in the year," and has
recently been forced to agree to greater transparency over official
plans for drones.

ECRE's weekly
bulletin reports that: "In a judgment delivered
this week, the European Court of Human Rights held that the conditions
of extreme poverty faced by a Serbian family of asylum seekers
following their eviction from an accommodation centre in Belgium
amounted to degrading treatment, contrary to Article 3 of the
European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR)."

"On June 20 and on June
30, 2015, new anti-terrorism legislation entered into force in
Germany. The new law makes it a crime to travel outside the country
with the intent to receive terrorist training, adds a new section
on terrorism financing to the Criminal Code, and creates national
identity card and passport restrictions on foreign fighters."

"The furthest corners
of the Deep Web, segments known as the Dark Web, contain content
that has been intentionally concealed. The Dark Web may be used
for legitimate purposes as well as to conceal criminal or otherwise
malicious activities. It is the exploitation of the Dark Web
for illegal practices that has garnered the interest of officials
and policy makers."

See also: How
Did The FBI Break Tor? (Forbes, July 2014, link): "Global
law enforcement conducted a massive raid of the Dark Web this
week."

News in Brief (15.7.15)

Chatting in Secret While We're All Being
Watched (The Intercept,
link): "if you take careful steps to protect yourself,
its possible to communicate online in a way thats
private, secret and anonymous. Today Im going to explain
in precise terms how to do that."

Today the JHA Counsellors, a
secretive working party of the Council of the EU, is discussing
draft agreements between the Member States that concern the ongoing
migration crisis. On the agenda are a set of conclusions on "designating
certain third countries as safe countries of origin", and
recommendations on resettlement programmes for 40,000 people
currently in Italy and Greece and 20,000 people outside of the
EU.

Deutsche Welle reports that: "Border authorities
in Bavaria have given up trying to take the fingerprints of all
the refugees entering the country, reported "Der Spiegel"
on Monday."

UK: Privacy
campaigners win concessions in UK surveillance report(The
Guardian, link): "Privacy campaigners have secured significant
concessions in a key report into surveillance by the British
security agencies published on Tuesday.The 132-page report,
A Democratic Licence To Operate, which Nick Clegg commissioned
last year in the wake of revelations by the US whistleblower
Edward Snowden, acknowledges the importance of privacy concerns."

However: "Despite its
concessions to the privacy lobby, the report overall is more
favourable to the police and intelligence services than to the
campaigners." The panel that wrote the report included
"three former heads of UK intelligence agencies,"
and "also calls for an overhaul of existing legislation."

GREECE: Court
awards 132,000 to HIV-positive inmates after prison hospital
human rights breaches (Human Rights Europe, link): "Detention
conditions for 13 HIV positive inmates in a Greek prison hospital's
psychiatric wing, breached European human rights law, judges
ruled today the European Court of Human Rights held, unanimously,
that there had been: a violation of Article 3 (prohibition of
torture and inhuman or degrading treatment) of the European Convention
on Human Rights; a violation of Article 13 (right to an effective
remedy) of the Convention."

"Although a national
competence, the European Commission and the EU Agencies can play
a crucial role in supporting Member States and facilitating information
exchange among EU actors. At European level we need to continue
to increase cooperation and intelligence sharing between national
authorities.,,,

on the 1st of July, Europol
launched the Internet Referral Unit (IRU). This Unit, which will
become fully operational in the next 12 months, will support
Member States in identifying and removing online terrorist material.
It is also essential to have strong public-private cooperation
in the field of security. To this end, the Commission will establish
an Internet Forum that will bring together Member States and
Internet Service Providers. The aim is to reduce the accessibility
of online terrorist material and to counter the terrorist narrative
and propaganda."
[emphasis added]

"Europol is expected
to establish a European response concerning internet content
referral activities with concerned private industry companies,
with Member States envisaging support to the EU IRU by appointing
national EU IRU contact points. Referral activities will not
constitute an enforceable act, thus the decision and related
implementation of the referral is taken under full responsibility
and accountability of the concerned service provider." [p8, emphasis added]

Agence Europe reported that: " Monika Hohlmeier
(PPE) regretted... that the link between irregular immigration
and terrorism was rejected by MEPs. This approach to security
is, in her view "reckless and unacceptable".... [the
Resolution] condemned any lumping together of terrorism, immigration
and Islam, and also serious violations of fundamental rights,
epitomised by the secret CIA prisons in Europe."

Caspar
Bowden Legacy Fund for privacy advocacy and technology (link): "Caspar Bowden worked
for over 20 years to protect fundamental freedoms on-line and
off-line, and in particular the right to privacy and freedom
from mass surveillance... In the hospital Caspar Bowden asked
that we work to ensure equal protection regardless of nationality.
Privacy is a universal human right."

Greece wins euro debt deal  but
democracy is the loser
(Channel 4, Paul Mason, link): "After an all-night negotiation
during which Greek prime minister was subjected, according to
one observer, to mental waterboarding, there is the
basis of a deal to keep Greece in the euro.... Ordinary people
dont know enough about the financial logic to understand
why this was always likely to happen: bonds, haircuts and currency
mechanisms are distant concepts. Democracy is not. Everybody
on earth with a smartphone understands what happened to democracy
last night." and see: #ThisIsACoup
(link) also: Euro
Summit Statement: Brussels, 12 July 2015 (pdf)

BULGARIA: 'Slow
and Fragile' Progress on Human Rights in Bulgaria by
Bulgarian Helsinki Committee (Liberties.eu, link) "The
latest report on Bulgaria by the Council of Europe shows slow
and fragile progress in strengthening human rights protection
of persons placed in institutions, migrants and media freedom."

"Greece is facing an
"unprecedented" emergency as migrants fleeing war and
poverty stream into the country's islands in huge numbers, the
U.N. refugee agency said Friday. The UNHCR said 77,100 people
have arrived in Greece by sea this year, an average of 1,000
per day, overwhelming local authorities. The country's precarious
economic situation is putting severe strain on small islands
that are unable to cope, the agency said.

"Greece is part of the
European Union and this is happening in Europe," UNHCR spokesman
William Spindler said in Geneva. "We would like the European
Union to have a much more active role in responding to the situation
in Greece.""

And see Letter:
"PREVENT will have a chilling effect on open debate, free
speech and political dissent - The latest addition to the United
Kingdoms counter-terrorism framework remains fixated on
ideology as the primary driver of terrorism" (link)

What happens when policy is made by corporations?
Your privacy is seen as a barrier to economic growth (Guardian, link): "The latest
trade deal to be passed by the EU will see us sacrifice our commitment
to data protection .... One overlooked aspect of the emerging
legal architecture that they enact is that, barring a Greece-like
rebellion from the citizens, Europe will eventually sacrifice
its strong and much-cherished commitment to data protection.
This protectionist stance  aimed, above all, at protecting
citizens from excessive corporate and state intrusion 
is increasingly at odds with the grab everything
mentality of contemporary capitalism.... It wont take long
for American lawyers to find the privacy equivalent of waterboarding:
some border-case scenario, which would greenlight horrible abuses."

NETHERLANDS: Na
tip WikiLeaks: privacycommissie opent onderzoek naar Hacking
Team (link) [After tip WikiLeaks: Privacy Commission
opens investigation into Hacking Team - The Belgian privacy commission
has opened an investigation into the Italian software company
Hacking Team. That company would be in possession of devices
that Belgian data interception.]

"Delegations will find
in annex the 4 column table on the General Data Protection Regulation
which comprises the Commission proposal, the first reading Position
of the European Parliament and the General Approach of the Council." [New text is highlighted]

Two new reports on EU databases
have been released by the EU's Agency for Large-Scale IT Systems
(eu-LISA), which is responsible for managing and developing the
Schengen Information System (SIS), the Visa Information System
(VIS) and Eurodac (used by Member States to compare the fingerprints
of migrants and asylum seekers). The new reports concern SIS
and Eurodac.

"In retrospect, it seems
somewhat premature to have issued a call on Surveillance and
Security Intelligence after Snowden.

At the time of writing, despite
his enforced exile in Russia, former National Security Agency
(NSA) contractor and whistleblower, Edward Snowden, seems almost
ubiquitous as a participant in debates on transnational surveillance,
even appearing virtually on one occasion in a Canadian High School
(Bradshaw 2015). And, as with all such impromptu historical periodizations,
there is always also a case to be made to say that Snowdens
revelations didnt change as much as we thought it might,
or at least, rested on a legacy of former events or long-standing
processes.

In the case of surveillance
and security intelligence, the latter is certainly true. The
former remains open as revelations and discussion resulting from
both the documents taken by Snowden continue in the broader context
of the changed climate of transparency resulting from his revelations
and other major initiatives like Wikileaks."

Institute of Race Relations
(IRR): Self
defence or a licence to kill? (link): "When we
look at the figures of young African Americans shot dead, some
might comfort themselves with the mantra thank goodness
our police forces, unlike those of the US, are not routinely
armed - But look at our record of BAME killings when they
are armed."

"Microsofts former
head of privacy and respected independent privacy campaigner
Caspar Bowden has died after a battle with cancer. A popular
and outspoken figure in privacy advocacy, Bowden was particularly
active after the Snowden revelations of government surveillance,
advising the European parliament among others. He was a co-founder
of the UK-based Foundation for Information Policy Research."

Contains an extraordinary proposal
to consider giving intelligence and internal security agencies
right to intervene in policy-making by finding: "ways
in which policy initiatives at the EU level could take into account
the concerns, opinions and suggestions from security services
at an early stage in the legislative process." and allowing:
"access by security services to information such as the
PNR, SIS, and call detail records, as essential tools in the
fight against terrorism"

"Strasbourg, 9 July 2015
 With conflicts in the Middle East, acts of Islamist violence
in Europe and incidents of unprecedented mass arrivals of migrants,
the annual report of the European Commission against Racism and
Intolerance (ECRI), published today, identifies a dramatic increase
in antisemitism, Islamophobia, online hate speech and xenophobic
political discourse as main trends in 2014."

"Data protection activist
Caspar Bowden died. He is co-founder of the Foundation for Information
Policy Research (FIPR), a British NGO, which has been very active
earlier. From 2002-2011 he was Privacy Officer of Microsoft for
Europe, the Middle East and Africa. After its end at Microsoft,
he was a harsh critic of US surveillance programs, and warned
before the start of the Snowden revelations before the FISA courts
and the powers as PRISM, who can give this secret court the US
intelligence agencies. He was also involved for anonymization
infrastructures, including the board of the TOR project. For
the Home Affairs Committee in the European Parliament (LIBE)
he had written the report "The US Surveillance Program and
Their Impact on EU citizens' fundamental rights" (PDF) last
year."

"The Metropolitan Police
put out an alarmist statement this week that, in certain circumstances,
merely viewing a video could constitute a criminal offence under
terrorist legislation. This is, of course, false. There is no
such terrorism offence for viewing a video, and the Met could
not substantiate their claim when challenged. It seems to me
that the Met press office simply invented a viewing
offence. My
full post on the Mets alarmist and false statement is at
the FT (free to access, but registration required). The
conclusion of my FT post (which should be read in full for context)
reads: "It would appear that the [Met] press office, which
had produced and promoted the bold statement that that viewing
a video could itself be a criminal act under terrorism legislation,
could not substantiate it when challenged."

USA-GERMANY: ALL
THE CHANCELLOR'S MEN (Wikileaks, link): "Wednesday
8 July at 1800 CEST, WikiLeaks publishes three NSA intercepts
of German Chancellor Angela Merkel, together with a list of 56
National Security Agency (NSA) target selectors for the Chancellor
and the Chancellery. It lists not only confidential numbers for
the Chancellor, but also for her top officials, her aides, her
chief of staff, her political office and even her fax machine.
The combined German NSA target lists released by WikiLeaks so
far shows the NSA explicitly targeted for long-term surveillance
125 phone numbers for top German officials and did so for political
and economic reasons, according to its own designations."

European Parliament fails citizens in
TTIP vote (STOP TTIP,
link) and "It is very positive that the European Parliament
repeated that TTIP could be endangered if US blanket mass surveillance
activities are not 'completely abandoned'", said Joe McNamee,
Executive Director of European Digital Rights"

There is still nothing new here
on asylum applicants' rights to be consulted and to agree to
the relocation, or how to deal with the problem if Member States
do not actually propose 40,000 places. The target numbers to
be relocated have been moved from the main text to the preamble.

"we set out in detail
the questions for which policymakers should require answers if
the demand for exceptional access is to be taken seriously. Absent
a concrete technical proposal, and without adequate answers to
the questions raised in this report, legislators should reject
out of hand any proposal to return to the failed cryptography
control policy of the 1990s."

Hungary MPs approve border fence and
anti-migrant law
(BBC News, link): "Hungary's parliament has passed new
legislation tightening asylum rules, and backed plans to erect
a border fence to keep out migrants. The new law allows the detention
of migrants in temporary camps, the speeding up of asylum assessments
and limiting the possibility for appeal. The move was criticised
by the UN and human rights groups."

Balkans: Refugees and migrants beaten
by police, left in legal limbo and failed by EU (AI, link): "Thousands of refugees,
asylum-seekers and migrants  including children 
making dangerous journeys across the Balkans are suffering violent
abuse and extortion at the hands of the authorities and criminal
gangs and being shamefully let down by a failing European Union
(EU) asylum and migration system which leaves them trapped without
protection in Serbia and Macedonia, said Amnesty International
in a new
report."

"Morpho has been awarded
a major contract from the Estonian government to supply an Advanced
Passenger Information/Passenger Name Record (API-PNR) system."
Estonia was awarded nearly 5 million by the European Commission
in 2012 for the setting up of a national PNR processing and analysis
system. Given the ongoing development of national PNR systems
with a view to interconnecting them, the following paragraph
is noteworthy. According to Morpho:

"This latest contract reinforces
our already established partnership with the Estonian government.
Morpho also advocates a holistic view of data sharing and interface
across borders, developing solutions which will ultimately facilitate
data exchange on the European level."

Leaked Documents Show FBI, DEA and U.S.
Army Buying Italian Spyware (Intercept,
link): "The FBI, Drug Enforcement Administration and
U.S. Army have all bought controversial software that allows
users to take remote control of suspects computers, recording
their calls, emails, keystrokes and even activating their cameras,
according to internal documents hacked from the softwares
Italian manufacturer."

- Strategic
review: Europol and Customs LIMITE doc no: 9572-15, pdf):
"Europol has access to only a fraction of the information
and expertise available at national level as Europol is generally
not the preferred channel of communication for Customs."

The discussion paper for Coreper
(Member States' representatives to the EU) confirms that the
Council is still intending to adopt the Commission's proposal
to relocate 40,000 asylum-seekers from Italy and Greece. There
seems no prospect of increasing the numbers to 50,000, to take
account of the increased numbers coming to the EU, as the draft
Keller report suggests. Nor is it clear yet what the Council
will do if Member States do not offer voluntarily the full 40,000
places, given that the Commission's idea of mandatory quotas
will be dropped.

However, the Council is considering
amending the rules on which nationalities are covered by the
rules. This would mean that not only Syrians and Eritreans would
be covered by the Decision; nationalities could be added or removed
depending on refugee recognition rates (for instance, Afghans
and Somalians also have a fairly high rate of successful claims).

The draft Council document shows
great concern to avoid 'secondary movements', ie refugees or
asylum-seekers moving between Member States. However, it says
nothing about the part of the draft Keller report which would
most obviously address this issue: allowing refugees to express
a preference over which country they go to, and giving them a
veto over their relocation. If refugees are only sent to countries
which they prefer to and/or agree to be in, they are much less
likely to move to another Member State.

Wikileaks: US
Bugs Germany Plotting BRICS Bailout for Greece(link)
Date: 2011: "Classification: TOP SECRET//COMINT//ORCON/NOFORN:
WikiLeaks Synopsis
Intercepted communication by UK's Intelligence Services of German
Chancellery Director-General for EU Affairs Nikolaus Meyer-Landrut
reveals German negotiating positions ahead of a European Union
Summit to discuss a joint German French response to the financial
crisis in Greece. The report reveals that Germany had opposed
tailored European solutions to the Greek crisis, instead supporting
a special IMF bailout plan for Greece funded by the BRICS countries."

""I oversee how
the intelligence services store and use bulk personal data (BPD).
There is no statutory definition of BPD, but in essence BPD refers
to data belonging to a range of individuals acquired by or held
on one or more analytical systems in the intelligence services.
The majority of these individuals are unlikely to be of intelligence
interest."[emphasis
added]

In 2014 a total of 2,032 surveillance/operations warrants were
issued for: the Security Service (MI5), the Secret Intelligence
Service (MI6), GCHQ and the Ministry of Defence (MOD). No breakdown
of the global figure is given - some warrants are for individuals/groups
others are open-ended/general warrants. They cover Intrusive
Surveillance, Directed Surveillance and Covert Human Intelligence
Sources (CHIS). There are also Property Interference Warrants
(Intelligence Services Act), Section 5:

"A property warrant
may be used for remote interference with a computer in order
to obtain information from the computer"

Plus "class authorisations"
for GCHQ and MI6 under "Section 7 of ISA the Secretary
of State (in practice normally the Foreign Secretary) may authorise
SIS or GCHQ to undertake acts outside the United Kingdom....
Section 7 authorisations can be used for highly intrusive
activities"

"Europols experience,
supported by the figures below, is that the expectations generated
by these political decisions have not been generally met, with
the potentials for the full and proper use of Europols
information management capabilities not realised in the area
of counter terrorism."

Europol's new roles on counter-terrorism
derive from political direction given by the Justice and Home
Affairs Council of 12 March 2015 and the Paris and Riga statements.
The legal basis for Europol's new role such as Check the Web,
Focal Point Travellers and using existing mechanisms like SIENA
and the Europol Information System is the
Council Decision 2005/671/JHA of 20 September 2005 on the exchange
of information and cooperation concerning terrorist offences
(pdf). This Decision states all information concerning terrorist
investigations should be sent to Europol and Eurojust (Article
2) and sent, under Article 6 to "other interested Member
States". The Decision makes no provision for the correction
of the data/intelligence files provided nor for its deletion
should an investigated or detained person(s) be released, not
charged or acquitted. It should be noted that most terrorist
investigation files will concern more than one person (the suspect),
possibly involving their family and friends.

"Delegations will find
enclosed at annex a note issued under the responsibility of the
Cabinet of the President of the European Council, in close cooperation
with the European External Action Service and the Commission
services....

The Summit will bring together
the leaders of the most concerned countries of origin, transit
and destination as well as regional organisations to identify,
agree and launch actions to jointly address immediate and long
term migration challenges as well as to reinforce the current
mechanisms to implement and follow up high level political decisions
on migration. Therefore, the aim is to invite the Heads of State
and Government of the European Union Member States and of the
countries parties to the Khartoum Process and the Rabat Process,
as well as the African Union Commission and the ECOWAS Commission.

Libya is central to irregular
migration to Europe but its participation to the summit will
depend on the evolution of its internal political situation....

Making progress on return
and readmission agreements (actions for both the EU and the countries
of origin to facilitate returns of irregular migrants, with particular
attention to assisted voluntary return and integration and the
establishing of readmission agreements with countries of origin)"

"The police watchdog
has recently widened its investigation into claims that five
officers were involved in spying on the family of Stephen Lawrence,
the teenager murdered by a racist gang. The investigation by
the Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC) is examining
allegations that the Metropolitan Police planted an undercover
officer in the Lawrence family camp.

At the moment, however, it
is unclear how far up the Mets chain of command knowledge
of the espionage went - a question that presumably the IPCC is
looking at.Two officers involved in the polices covert
work have said that information about the Lawrences that had
been gathered by the Mets undercover unit was passed to,
or requested by, the senior echelons of Scotland Yard."

London: Summer Conference:
Drones and Forever War: "The summer conference has become
an annual event for the Drone Campaign Network. It is open to
everyone and free! It provides an excellent opportunity to update
drone knowledge and to plan campaigns, inspiring each other as
we share ideas and experience." Date / Time: Saturday 11th
July 10.30  4.30: Location: Friends Meeting House, Euston
Road, London NW1 2BJ Programme: Download
here (link)

UK: Tourist
arrested on terrorism charge for taking a selfie video at Churchill
Square (The Argus, link): " A TOURIST was arrested
on suspicion of preparing acts of terrorism after filming himself
on his mobile phone outside Churchill Square shopping centre.
Nasser Al-Ansari was taken to a police van for three hours before
police decided there was no immediate threat but
officers kept his mobile phone for further investigation. The
38-year-old is furious about the way he was treated after being
stopped at the Brighton shopping centre and said it is changing
his perception of the U.K.. Mr Al-Ansari said he had been
recording a condolence message in Arabic for terrorist bombing
victims in his native Kuwait in front of the shopping centre
last Friday afternoon. He was ordered to delete the footage by
a store security guard, but said he refused because he didnt
think he should or had to. He then complained about the request,
at which point police were called."

NSAs Top Brazilian Political and
Financial Targets Revealed by New WikiLeaks Disclosure (The Intercept, link): "Top
secret data from the National Security Agency, shared with The
Intercept by WikiLeaks, reveals that the U.S. spy agency targeted
the cellphones and other communications devices of more than
a dozen top Brazilian political and financial officials, including
the countrys president Dilma Rousseff, whose presidential
planes telephone was on the list. President Rousseff just
yesterday returned to Brazil after a trip to the U.S. that included
a meeting with President Obama, a visit she had delayed for almost
two years in anger over prior revelations of NSA spying on Brazil."
and see: Wikileaks
- Brazil (link)

"On 1st July 2015, the
Presidency also received compromise proposals from the European
Parliament on these issues which are reflected in the 4th column
of the document in annex...

Taking into account the General Approach reached on 15th June
2015 which constitutes the basis of the negotiation mandate for
the Presidency, and taking into account the discussions at the
DAPIX meeting of 1st July 2015, the Presidencys suggestions
are included in the 4th column. These suggestions are indicated
in [brackets, italic and bold]."

"European Union (EU)
Member States decided to implement a coherent and coordinated
European prevention approach. On 12 March 2015, the Justice and
Home Affairs Council of the European Union mandated Europol to
establish a dedicated unit aimed at reducing the level and impact
of terrorist and violent extremist propaganda on the internet.
The European Union Internet Referral Unit at Europol will
identify and refer relevant online content towards concerned
internet service providers and support Member States with
operational and strategic analysis." [emphasis added]

"Europol is expected
to establish a European response concerning internet content
referral activities with concerned private industry companies,
with Member States envisaging support to the EU IRU by appointing
national EU IRU contact points. Referral activities will not
constitute an enforceable act, thus the decision and related
implementation of the referral is taken under full responsibility
and accountability of the concerned service provider." [p8, emphasis added]

"Should people have the
right to create and share images and photographs of public buildings
without having to compensate for the use of copyright? The so-called
freedom of panorama already exists in some EU countries, but
MEPs are now considering whether it should be extended to all
member states. As they will debate it on 9 July, we asked two
MEPs on opposing sides of the issue why they think it would be
a good or a bad thing."

"For several years already,
migrants, mainly subsaharans, have found refuge in Boukhalef,
a district in the periphery of Tangier. Some just live their
lives, others have been regularized or are being hosted by their
respective community while trying to cross to Europe. Subsaharans
get harassed in the quarter or beyond on a regular basis, sometimes
violently, by Moroccans reproducing racist ideologies. Regularly,
the authorities decide to evict migrants violently, which has
provoked several tragedies. On 1st of July 2015 more than 200
police officers and soldiers were deployed to the district Boukhalef
in order to evacuate all the blacks....

Hundreds of people were deported
further South, others are now on the streets, hiding in the Tangier
medina, and need urgent support. A delegation of migrants' NGOS
from Tangier and Rabat is calling for funds to support the evicted
inhabitants of Boukhalef. The priority would be to provide at
least some shelter for the most vulnerable people for the coming
days, as they have lost all their possessions and are just staying
in the streets! Please let us know if you can donate any sum
of money to buy some blankets, plastic sheets, some cooking utensils,
food and medicine. Please email to nobordersmorocco@riseup.net
and we will give you the account details. Any sum is welcome!"

Serbia receives assistance to stem illegal
migrant flows (euractiv,
link): "Police chiefs from Germany, Austria and Hungary
have agreed to help Serbia crack down on waves of illegal migrants
transiting its territory heading for the European Union. Meanwhile,
Budapest said it will forge ahead with plans to erect a fence
at its border with Serbia."

AUSTRIA: 'No
let-up' in asylum seeker crisis (The Local.at, link):
"Tent cities for 400 asylum seekers are being set up
in Carinthia and Burgenland - with Interior Minister Johanna
Mikl-Leitner saying that she sees no end in sight for the refugee
crisis."

EU
parliament's largest political groups split over fundamental
rights (The Parliament,
link): "Parliament's 'grand coalition' between its centre-right
and centre-left groupings is divided over a report on the situation
of fundamental rights in the EU for the years 2013 and 2014.....
The European People's Party (EPP) group voted against the report
in parliament's civil liberties, justice and home affairs (LIBE)
committee, dismissing most of its content as "plain absurd
and nonsense". The report, however, was passed on Thursday
and is due to go before parliament's Strasbourg plenary session
in September."

NSA: Behind
the Curtain - A Look at the Inner Workings of NSAs XKEYSCORE
(Intercept, link): "The sheer quantity of communications
that XKEYSCORE processes, filters and queries is stunning. Around
the world, when a person gets online to do anything  write
an email, post to a social network, browse the web or play a
video game  theres a decent chance that the Internet
traffic her device sends and receives is getting collected and
processed by one of XKEYSCOREs hundreds of servers scattered
across the globe."

The parliament refused access
largely on the grounds that multi-column documents in its position
had been produced by the Council and therefore could not be released.
They also claimed that there are a large number of such documents
- exactly!

The Metropolitan Police have
released the 'tradecraft' manual for the Special Demonstration
Squad, who infiltrated protest groups,,,The Metropolitan Police
have published the manual used to train undercover spies to infiltrate
protest groups for the first time. The so-called 'tradecraft'
manual, given to members of the Met's Special Demonstration Squad,
instructs new recruits on how to steal the identities of dead
babies using methods inspired by a Frederick Forsyth novel. The
document, finally published yesterday after numerous Freedom
of Information requests, also suggests agents should: "try
to have fleeting, disastrous relationships" with group members."

"The British government
has admitted that its spook agency GCHQ spied on Amnesty International,
according to campaigners at the human rights group.

Amnesty said on Wednesday
that it had received an email from the Investigatory Powers Tribunal
(IPT)  the organization responsible for policing the UK's
surveillance of its own citizens  revealing that the government
intercepted, accessed and stored its communications for an unspecified
period of time"

"The United States did
not just tap chancellor Angela Merkels phone but also eavesdropped
on several of her ministers, the German daily Sueddeutsche Zeitung
has reported, citing documents from WikiLeaks."

and see: Wikileaks
(link) and also: Wikileaks:
'Massive' NSA spying on top German officials (DW, link):
"Wikileaks says its latest release of documents shows
the wide reach of economic espionage conducted by the NSA in
Germany. Documents released by the whistleblowers suggest an
intense interest in the Greek debt crisis."

"Much has been said and
written about Passenger Name Records (PNR) in the last decade
and a half. When we were asked to write a short report for the
Consultative Committee about PNR, in the wider contexts,
we therefore thought we could confine ourselves to a relatively
straightforward overview of the literature and arguments.

However, the task turned out to be more complex than anticipated.
In particular, the context has changed as a result of the Snowden
revelations. Much of what was said and written about PNR before
his exposés had looked at the issues narrowly, as only
related to the identification of known or [clearly
identified] suspected terrorists (and perhaps
other major international criminals). However, the most recent
details of what US and European authorities are doing, or plan
to do, with PNR data show that they are part of the global surveillance
operations we now know about."

USA-NSA: XKEYSCORE:
NSAs Google for the Worlds Private Communications
(The Intercept, link): "The Intercept is publishing 48
top-secret and other classified documents about XKEYSCORE dated
up to 2013, which shed new light on the breadth, depth and functionality
of this critical spy system  one of the largest releases
yet of documents provided by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden."

News Digest (2.7.15)

UK: The
Unseen March Questionning the militarisation of UK schools
(Quakers in Britain, link): "Step by step, a military
presence is entering schools across Britain. This is part of
a conscious strategy to increase support for the armed forces
in the wake of unpopular wars. Quakers in Britain have produced
The Unseen March, a short film to start a public debate about
the militarisation of education"

UK and Spain granted most EU citizenships (euobserver, link): "Spain and
the UK issued almost half of all new EU citizenships in 2013.
The figures, released on Wednesday (1 July) by the EU statistical
office, Eurostat, show Spain accounted for around 23 percent
(225,800) of all citizenships granted in the EU, while the UK
accounted for 21 percent (207,500). In relative terms compared
to population size, Ireland and Sweden come out top."

Guest Post: New Polish Criminal Procedure
Code (Fair Trials,
link): "The revised Polish Criminal Procedure Code enters
into force today, and Malgorzata Maczka-Pacholak (from LEAP Advisory
Board Member Mikolaj Pietrzaks office) covers the key changes
and talks about the current state of implementation of the EU
Directive on Access to a Lawyer."

"offered the possibility
to deploy ''hotspot teams'' to help in the swift processing of
asylum requests and help with the return of irregular migrants.
These teams will include experts from the European Asylum Support
Office (EASO), Frontex and Europol in order to improve the capacity
of fingerprinting, identify abusive asylum claims, and ensure
effective returns."

It is not all clear what the
legal powers the Commissioner is referring to for Europol, Frontex
or EASO [European Asylum Support Office] to ensure the "swift
identification, registration and fingerprinting" of migrants
or for EASO and Europol to: "identify abusive asylum
claims, and ensure effective returns."

See also: Denmark
to impose controls on border, risking EU ire (Reuters,
link): "Denmark will impose controls on its border to
stop smugglers and illegal migrants, its new foreign minister
said on Tuesday, in a move likely to worry the European Union
but please a right-wing party on whose support the government
now depends. More police, machines screening number plates and
other measures would increase security without breaking EU rules
guaranteeing freedom of movement through the bloc, Kristian Jensen
told Reuters."

 a rise in the number of violent offences motivated by
right-wing extremism (the largest number since 2008) and xenophobia
(highest level since the current definition of politically motivated
crime was introduced in 2001); and
 an enormous increase in the number of crimes and violent
offences in the category of politically motivated crime by foreigners."

"The number of violent
acts committed by right-wing extremists increased by 24% last
year. A total of 990 violent crimes were recorded. De Maizière
said now one in two right-wing extremists is considered to be
violence-oriented, indicating that the 512 attacks against foreigners
are troubling.

Attacks on refugee camps motivated
by right-wing extremism also increased from 55 recorded in 2013
to 170 last year. This year, the number could be even higher.
In the first half of 2015, there were already 150 crimes of this
kind, according to de Maizière. There should be no
silent understanding and especially no silent consent for
this, he said."

UK: G4S
and Serco continue to dominate criminal justice market (Centre
for Crime and Justice Studies, link): "Controversial
security companies G4S and Serco received more than seven pounds
in every ten spent by the government on prison and probation-related
contracts in the four years to April 2014, according to new research
by the Centre for Crime and Justice Studies" See: Report
(link)

"The Constitutional Court
denounced mass and preventive collection of data  data
about the location, duration, and the participants involved,
based on the provisions of the Electronic Communications Act
(Act No. 351/2011 Coll.) - as an extensive infringement of the
fundamental right to privacy. According to the Constitutional
Court, the extensiveness of the infringement was demonstrated
by the very fact that collected data concerned a huge and unpredictable
number of communicating parties and such collection could have
induced a feeling of constant surveillance."

Deborah Coles, Co-Director of
INQUEST said: This important report is a devastating
indictment of a flawed system that is systematically failing.
That its findings echo what has been said repeatedly and that
so many deaths could have been avoided if already-known lessons
had been acted upon is all the more shocking.

Government can either ignore
this report at its peril or do something radically different
that could be a lasting legacy. Already this year eight young
people have taken their own lives in prison."News Digest (1.7.15)

Freedom of Panorama under threat (Julia Reda MEP, link): "Original
proposal from my draft report: Calls on the EU legislator to
ensure that the use of photographs, video footage or other images
of works which are permanently located in public places is permitted

Amendment 421, adopted in committee with the votes of
European Peoples Party, Socialists & Cavada (Liberals):Calls
on the EU legislator to ensure that the use of photographs, video
footage or other images of works which are permanently located
in public places is permitted; Considers that the commercial
use of photographs, video footage or other images of works which
are permanently located in physical public places should always
be subject to prior authorisation from the authors or any proxy
acting for them"

Data or it didn't happen (maneeshjuneja.com, link): "Today,
there is incredible excitement, enthusiasm and euphoria about
technology trends such as Wearables, Big Data and the Internet
of Things. Listening to some speakers at conferences, it often
sounds like the convergence of these technologies promises to
solve every problem that humanity faces. Seemingly, all we need
to do is let these new ideas, products and services emerge into
society, and it will be happy ever after. Just like those fairy
tales we read to our children. Except, life isn't a fairy tale,
neither is it always fair and equal. In this post, I examine
how these technologies are increasingly of interest to employers
and insurers when it comes to determining risk, and how this
may impact our future."

Statewatch does not
have a corporate view, nor does it seek to create one, the views
expressed are those of the author. Statewatch is not responsible
for the content of external websites and inclusion of a link
does not constitute an endorsement.&COPY;
Statewatch ISSN 1756-851X. Personal usage as private individuals/"fair
dealing" is allowed. We also welcome links to material on
our site. Usage by those working for organisations is allowed
only if the organisation holds an appropriate licence from the
relevant reprographic rights organisation (eg: Copyright Licensing
Agency in the UK) with such usage being subject to the terms
and conditions of that licence and to local copyright law.